The interpretations The Sun had to apply in order to make its research findings fit such a divisive headline were huge and glaring and IPSO has now notedThe Sun "conflated important distinctions... between "sympathy" for [people going to fight in Syria] and "support" for [jihadis]."

"Significantly misleading": The Sun's divisive headline drew a great deal of criticism back in 2015 and now the industry's regulator IPSO has finally caught up.

The Sun's misrepresentation of the research drew such criticism last November that Survation, the company which conducted the research, was quick to distance itself from the paper's conclusions.

"Taken in its entirety, the coverage presented as a fact that the poll showed that 1 in 5 British Muslims had sympathy for those who left to join ISIS and for ISIS itself. In fact, neither the question nor the answers which referred to "sympathy" made reference to IS. The newspaper had failed to take appropriate care in its presentation of the poll results, and as a result the coverage was significantly misleading, in breach of Clause 1."

However, what difference IPSO's ruling, against both The Sun and its sister paper The Times - announced around midnight on a bank holiday Good Friday - will really make is less clear. The story's damage was no doubt done last year and will have lingered ever since. Furthermore, The Sun's publication of IPSO's ruling inside the paper has none of the prominence of the front page story itself. IPSO claims its committee "gave careful consideration to requiring a reference to [the decision] to be published on the front page" but in the end decided The Sun could choose where it went, as long as it was no further back in the paper than page five. The Sun opted for a single column on page two.

This was undoubtedly the biggest test so far for IPSO, which is funded by the publications it regulates, and it would be difficult to make a case for it emerging with a great deal of credit. While it no doubt had to be seen to give careful consideration to a story which drew more than 3,000 complaints, it is hard to imagine how this ruling took four months, especially when the facts seemed so plain and the story was so controversial.

Mar 25, 2016

The Guardian got a lot of things right with its tributes to footballing legend Johan Cruyff who sadly died on Thursday. It commissioned David Winner, author of Brilliant Orange, the definitive book on Dutch football, and ran an excellent piece by Sid Lowe on Cruyff's Barcelona years. However, its good work has been overshadowed slightly by a prominent error. Unfortunately, the picture it used (right) is actually of Cruyff's team mate, Rob Rensenbrink.

The two men did look fairly similar, however, there were some clear clues it wasn't Cruyff (the most major of which being the fact it was Rensenbrink) as many people were quick to point out on Twitter. Cruyff famously wore the number 14 and a customised Adidas shirt that had just two stripes on the sleeve, rather than the usual three stripes Rensenbrink was clearly sporting.

It seems this error may have stemmed from a wrongly captioned picture from photo library Corbis (below) which the Guardian's picture desk may have taken at its word.

Mar 23, 2016

The Daily Star is claiming "EASTER EGGS" have been "BANNED" so as not to offend "non Christians". By which it means it has heard there are some Easter eggs in the shops which don't have the word "Easter" on them (why should they, it's obvious what they are) and it's found a couple of try-hards willing to moan about this supposed "censorship" (one of whom just happens to be promoting his own brand of Easter eggs, of course).

Easter eggs haven't been "banned" and nor has the word 'Easter'.

A very quick look at the chocolate eggs being advertised online and in the shops clearly shows this claim to be a nonsense.

It is just the latest excuse for the Daily Star to indulge in some divisive finger pointing at "political correctness" and "non-Christians" and some free publicity for somebody peddling his own chocolate eggs.

Mar 16, 2016

Boris Johnson is doing his bit to push Britain towards the Brexit door and like many in the ‘leave’ camp he seems intent on doing it one silly lie at a time. It’s text book stuff: pick a ridiculous lie about the EU and then keeping repeating it as fact until it sticks.

At his monthly Mayor’s question time on Wednesday morning Johnson told members of the London Assembly there are EU laws banning children under eight from blowing up balloons.

It was the second time in a month he’d mentioned this law. Penning a piece for The Telegraph in February, Johnson wrote:

"Sometimes these EU rules sound simply ludicrous, like the rule that you can’t recycle a teabag, or that children under eight cannot blow up balloons."

The EU addressed the balloon claim back in 2011, when The Telegraph, Daily Mail and Daily Express first reported the supposed ban. The EU made clear back then "balloons made of latex carry a warning aiming to prevent children from choking or suffocating…This warning recommends adult supervision, it does not forbid children under 8 from inflating balloons".

It should also be pointed out Boris's teabag claim isn’t true either. ("Under EU law the UK is fully entitled, but not obliged, to impose stringent standards on the composting of household catering waste... It is also up to member states to ensure they have the treatment facilities in place to enforce their own standards").

These claims are easy to check but that won’t stop politicians and newspapers using them, because it is an approach that works. Repeated enough, a lie, even - or perhaps especially - a ludicrous one, can stick.

You can find a handy list of ‘Euromyths’ here. You may need it in the months ahead.

Mar 14, 2016

David Cameron’s PR operation has been criticised for fobbing off local newspapers with an article attributed to the PM that was compiled with an "insert name of county here" level of sincerity and all the humanity of an automated voice menu on a telephone helpline ("To hear why David Cameron loves… Yorkshire… press 1, now").

The same article, with minor edits, was hawked all over the country, making clear in the process that not only had Cameron been nowhere near the copy, but also the extent to which his PR people thought they could get editors to all run any old puff-piece for them for free simply by dangling the PM's name.

From the outset, the editors will have been well aware the article wasn't really written by Cameron. Of course it wasn't. Newspapers are familiar with ghost-written columns and contributions. But there still needs to be something in it for the paper and its readers. There needs to be a quality to the article, or an exclusivity that lifts it at least notionally above editorially worthless free-advertising.

Mar 12, 2016

From Sky News to The Telegraph, via The Mirror, The Metro, The Sun and the Evening Standard, UK media outlets were falling over themselves on Friday to report the find of a 'giant rat' in East London.

"Rat 'as big as a four-year-old boy' found in London", reported ITV News, where clearly nobody has ever met - or even been - a four-year-old boy.

The story was accompanied by the now obligatory 'forced perspective' photo that accompanies all such 'giant rat' articles (somebody holds the rat away from their body and close to the camera ideally at the end of a long stick to exaggerate its size as much as possible).

Friday lunchtime must have been kind to a few news desks because there was certainly no shortage of outlets repeating claims the rat weighed "25lb" and was "four-feet long". For the whole of Friday afternoon is was as if the media had turned into a pub full of boozed-up anglers whose sense of scale had been forever warped by tall tales of 'the one that got away'.

Few of the outlets that ran the story questioned the obvious forced perspective of the photo or thought it odd the gas engineer and electrician who found the rat had apparently weighed it.

"James, I’ve found a rat."

"Wait there Tony, I’ll get the scales."

Similarly nobody questioned the not-unimpressive physical feat of somebody posing for a photo while holding a "25lb" weight (11.3Kg), one-handed at the end of a stick (try picking up a 25lb dumbbell with a litter picker and holding it at arms length, see how you get on).

After the story had been all over the media on Friday, all that was left was for the Daily Star (the home of giant rat stories) to run it on Saturday's front page and claim it as an "EXCLUSIVE":

Hackney Council has been doing its bit to dispel 'giant rat' panic by pointing out how deceptive forced perspective photos can be.

Mar 07, 2016

"A review of David Astor: A Life in Print, a biography of the former editor of the Observer, contained a number of errors."

They say "a number of errors" and it seems plausible they struggled to count the exact number.

"In the article we suggested William Waldorf Astor was named after a hotel, when in fact his name referred to the family’s native Rhineland village. He didn’t build Cliveden, as we suggested, but bought it, and he didn’t sack the editor of the Observer for spiking his contributions... We said Katharine Whitehorn was women’s editor of the Observer when in fact she was a columnist. We said Patrick Leigh Fermor compared David Astor to Disney’s Pluto; Fermor actually compared the writer Philip Toynbee to that cartoon character. Terence Kilmartin replaced Jim Rose as Observer literary editor, not JC Trewin. During the war, David Astor didn’t merely suffer “a mild attack of dysentery” as suggested in the review. In fact he was wounded in action during a German ambush in the Ardennes..."

But other than that, they nailed it.

Normally such corrections relating to a book review, might go unnoticed, but for the fact it seems quite an achievement to get so much biographical information wrong when the book being reviewed was a biography.

The Sunday Express has claimed the EU wants to take "control of our coasts". According to the paper:

"THE EU has drawn up plans to seize control of the British coastguard service as it creates a Europe-wide border force. Critics say it would result in the biggest transfer of sovereignty since the creation of the euro."

It calls it an "extraordinary measure" and quotes a spokesperson from the leave campaign who heaps on more hyperbole. But the article, towards the end, also quotes immigration minister James Brokenshire saying:

"Britain is not part of the Schengen area and, to be absolutely clear, we will not be part of an EU Border and Coast Guard."

So the EU won't be seizing our coast or our coast guard. It seems the headline was just a bit of anti-EU scaremongering. And this from a paper that last month branded scaremongering a "cheap tactic".

In February, a Sunday Express leader criticised what it claimed were "dire and entirely unfounded warnings" being issued by the pro-EU lobby. But obviously scaremongering from the anti-EU lobby is fair game, which is handy, because without it the Express and Sunday Express would probably struggle for content.